Communicating the Cross

One leftover from my days as a magazine editor is that I still get sent (not that I ever asked for it) The Church of England Newspaper. So I regularly read of the arguments that dominate the lives of my Anglican brothers and sisters. The back page of the paper is written by Fleet Street journalists from the mainstream papers. Today's was by Jonathan Wynne-Jones of the Sunday Telegraph (a paper I never read) and he discussed the partnership between the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and then he made this comment:

"As symbolism goes however, nothing can touch Christ's crucifixion of course, the ultimate sacrifice. It is this message that most powerfully unites the two archbishops who are charged with keeping this image in a public space that is dominated by celebrity, consumerism and money."

It is the challenge of all churches to figure out how to communicate the deep truths of the cross in a society that lives in the shallow end of existence. It is our challenge to call first Christians to reject the gods of our age who promise much but deliver little and instead follow a man who called us to take up our cross, to give up our lives and gain so much more.